Week update: Oct 25-29

Hey everyone,

This week consisted of two big highlights, and a lot of normalness. For the firs time, I felt almost like a real college student. Almost :)

The first highlight was on Sunday, October 25th. MASA, the program that brings American teens to Israel, such as me, sponsered a free concert for all teens spending a year in Israel. This concert started out as something small, some speakers, some little performances, etc. Nothing too exciting. A few weeks ago, they decided to turn it from a little concert into a huge concert by booking one of the most famous Israeli bands: Idan Raichel! Idan Raichel is awesome, their music is great and above all, all American Jews know and love their music. Therefore, all Americans in Israel suddenly wanted to go to this concert. This includes Nativ, Yearcourse, Kivonim, Yeshiva programs, etc. There were over 1000 people there. I'll post some pictures and videos below for you guys to see! It was an amazing concert, their music is so unique, and I found myself understand much more Hebrew than I expected. That was cool. A really fun night, got to see my yearcourse friends again after spending the weekend with them just the day before and see the Kivonim friends that will shortly be leaving Israel to travel.

The second highlight was last night, Oct 28, I went to the Jerusalem Poal's basketball game against some random European time in the Euro Basketball league. We didn't know who they were playing, we couldn't figure it out. They wore blue uniforms, if you know, tell me? That would be great thanks. I got back from school at 6:30 on Wednesday, so the Nativ group had already left. So Jesse, Jonny, Max and I had to make it there on our own. No big deal, except it took a very very veryyyy long time. We ended up getting to the game in the middle of the 3rd quarter. I didn't really care, it was still an unbelievable experience. It was really similar to being at a college basketball game, everyone was wearing red, the color of Poal, cheering, yelling, people brought drums to bang on, and the level of basketball was about that of a mediocre D1 school, so it worked out really well. I'll get some pics and vids of that too.

Classes this week were ok, Ulpan is getting hard but I'm learning a lot which is strange that it is working out that way. I just need to cement the new verb forms, new vocab, etc. It's getting technically more difficult, but I'm understand more and more.

Talmud is great, learning a lot and a great environment to spend time in. My cheveruta is Rachel, which means partner in Hebrew, and we do all of the Talmud homework together because you are not supposed to study the Talmud alone. Rab Pesach is our teacher, and he is a really good and passionate teacher.

Silicon Wadi is going well, finally dropped into a groove which consists of reviewing the homework for the first 2 hours and then learning new information for the second two hours.

Israel society and politics is a good class, but it is sooo much history on the society of Israel so far. I think that eventually it will be a good class, but at the moment it doesn't seem worth it to stay at school an extra hour and a half and get back at 6:45 as opposed to 4:45. That's kind of annoying, but it also has my Tuesday's and Thursday's almost completely free. That's really nice when that happens because I am very productive on those days, and I tend to do homework better at school than at home. Having class so late gives me a 4 hour break on Monday and a 2 hour break on Wednesday.

Freshman Writing is going to be terrible. It's so much work, and so far it doesn't seem to be helping me with my writing, which is it's overall goal. That's kind of annoying, but its ok. Hopefully they will teach me to improve my writing level. My topic is Conservative Judaism, and I believe I will be writing about the trends of Conservative Judaism over the last couple decades or so. I'm sure I'll be addressing the idea of Conservative Judaism increasingly becoming more and more secular, but I'm not sure I will take a stance for it or against it. I'll have to decide by next Thursday so I'll keep you updated on that.

Erev Nativ (Tuesday nights on Nativ, all Nativers must attend and its usually geared towards learning) was good this week. If you remember, a few weeks ago we were lectures by one of the most prominent Rabbi's in the Conservative Movement, Rabbi Roth. This week, we had Rabbi Artson. He lectured us on the topic of God. Rabbi Artson's main points were these: God is not all knowing because he can't know the future; God is not all powerful because if he had all the power, then he would have none of the power; God is not all good because if he is all good then he cannot improve; and prayer is not magic. As you can see, it was a very intense and intellectually challenging conversation. It was a very interesting discussion, and it has spurred a ton of conversations between Nativers over the last few days. Yesterday, Jesse, Joey, and I had a conversation for about an hour and a half over what the Rabbi talked about. I don't particularly want to post my own ideals in the blog, so if your interested in hearing, I would love to tell you just not here. send me an email. In my opinion, Rabbi Artons's views directly conflicted Rabbi Roth's and that was helping for me to have a balance of what to believe.

OK well on that note, nothing else really exciting happened this weekend, so I'll get some pics up and say goodbye! This weekend I will most likely be on base; I was going to go visit my friend Roee and Mor outside of Tel-Aviv, but that kind of fell through at the last second. Then I was going to go back to Bat Yam, but I just kind of want to stay on base and have Shabbat in Jerusalem. We'll see.

Have a good and restful Shabbat.

-Josh

Free Weekend in Bat Yam

Good afternoon,

Currently I'm sitting in Silicon Wadi class, everyone is giving presentations about Israeli startups that they researched over the week. I researched a company called Mind360, its a pretty cool company, it's one of those 'play brain games to make you smarter' companies. Fun stuff.

Friday morning, October 23rd, Seth and I board a bus from the central bus station en route to Bat Yam. Bat Yam is a suburb of Tel-Aviv. One of my good friends from back home, Arielle Rosenberg, a girl that I met through USY, is currently on Young Judea Yearcourse. Unlike Nativ, YC is split up in 3 different locations, and she is currently in Bat Yam. They live in apartments spread out around the city, similar to what I'll be doing second semester in Yerucham. (Just did my presentation, went well. I think he liked my choice of company and analysis of it.) Unlike the cities that I am familiar with- Jerusalem, Kiryat Gat, Tiberous- Bat Yam doesn't have a central bus station, aka a place where everyone on the bus gets off the bus and from there walks/takes a taxi to their final destination. In Bat Yam, you just need to get off at one of the stops in town. We got off at a random stop, called Arielle, and eventually made it to her apartment. She wasn't there when we arrived, so Seth and I hung out with her roommates until she got there. Her friends Ben and Andrew came over, and after about an hour I decided that I wanted to go on a walk and see the town. We walked around Bat Yam, a pretty nice city that is on the Mediterranean Sea. Her apartment is about 20 minutes walking from the sea. We walked there and sat along the beach for about an hour. It was so beautiful to see the sun setting over the sea, and at least for me, being able to see a body of water. We don't get to see that much water in Jerusalem.

We walked back to the apartment after Shabbat started, and then went to a Yearcourse Ulpan dinner. Seth, Arielle, Marissa (Arielle's roommate) and I walked towards the Ulpan dinner. We picked up one of the "tzofim," Yoni, along the way. Tzofim are Israel's that live with Yearcourers, just graduated high school, and basically are taking a gap year before the army in Israel. One tzfoim lives in each apartment. Yoni is a really cool guy, he cooked the Challah for the dinner. There was about 20 people at this dinner. We did the blessings, ate, and played some games as a group. This was a cool experience for me because it gave me a little insight into what being on Yearcourse is like. Apparently, this not only was my first official yearcourse dinner, but Arielle's too. She said they don't really do the whole "communal meals" too often.

After a great dinner, meeting lots of new people and having a great time, we made our way back to change into bathing suits. We were going to take a little night swim in the sea. We met up with a bunch of other Yearcoursers when we got there. We didn't end up swimming, but just ended up talking and hanging out with them for a while. There was about 25 of us on the beach. Around midnight, we made our way back to the apartment for a good nights sleep.

The next day, we woke up around 11:30. Marissa and I went to Ben and Andrew's apartment to get some eggs and bread so we could make french toast. and by we I mean Arielle made French toast. It was super yummy. After breakfast/lunch we hung out in the apartment and took a nap.

After the nap I took the lead and said "time to go swimming!" I was not going to Bat Yam and not swim. We got to the sea just in time to swim, and eventually see the sun set again. It was sooo beautiful a second time. After a good swimming/body surfing session we retured a final time to the apartment, made some pizza/pasta dinner and said goodbye. It was a very fun weekend.

Class is starting again. Time to learn. Talk soon!

Josh

Class Schedule

Hey everyone,

I've been asked to post my schedule online for Hebrew U, so here it is!

Sunday: Silicon Wadi 12:30-4:00

Monday: Ulpan 8:30-10:00

Talmud 2:30-4:00

Society and Politics: 4:30-6:00

Tuesday: Ulpan 10:30-12:00

Wednesday: Ulpan 8:30-12:00

Talmud 2:30-4:00

Society and Politics: 4:30-6:00

Thursday: Freshman Writing 1030-12:00 (but only until Nov. 26)

Update about my weekend in Bat Yam coming soon!

Josh

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!

Shalom K'vutzah Josh (Hello Josh's group)

Two days ago was my official first day of being a "college" student. I use that term lightly.

I woke up on Sunday (the first day of the week) at 10:00. Seffi and I got ready, and walked out of Beit Nativ at 10:35. Unlike the mini-mester where there was a bus for us everyday outside of Beit Nativ for free, we have to use public transportation to get from base to school and back. We knew we needed to take either but 19 or 4aleph, but we didn't quite know where to pick it up. We walked up Agron street and instinctivly made a right onto King George Street, which heads towards downtown Jerusalem and many bus stops. We firgured it would be that way. After about 10 minutes of walking, looking at bus stop signs, realizing we were wrong, and continuing walking, we called the Israeli staff member who told me. "No no Josh, get onto Gaza street." So we walk all the way back to Gaza (pronounced "aza") street, which happens to be the continuation of Agron, and made it finally to the right bus stop. We arrived at school by 11:40, 50 minutes until Silicon Wadi, our first and only class on Sunday began.

We went to our favorite cafeteria, Frank Sinatra, for lunch. We enjoyed a delicious Frank Sinatra lunch, something we had been deprived of since mini-mester ended, and strolled towards Rotherberg for class with plenty of time. We arrive there at 12:25, 5 minutes before class started. We took our seats, and at 12:29, six of our fellow Nativers run in flustered and out of breath. They made it just in time to the computer lab, where our class for some reason takes place. They left an hour later than we did, and didn't even get a chance to eat. Good planning on Seffi and my part :)

4 long hours later, class was finally over. Silicon Wadi is a double period, so it only meets once a week. After class we went to the forum, the center of campus, went downstairs and caught the bus back to King George. We got back around 5. It was a good first day of school. In Silicon wadi, we learned about our teachers own personal business, a little bit about the economic history of Israel, and what we're going to do in this class.

The next day, I have Ulpan, which is just a continuation of mini-mester ulpan, same book, same class, just a different teacher and a different classroom. Plus, its 1.5 hrs of class as opposed to 4. Nothing special, just a muchhhhhhhh better teacher. Yay!

Talmud as a Cultural Adventure: awesome so far. We need to have a CHevrutza, or partner, with which we do all of the homework and discuss Talmudic ideas with. My parter is my friend Rachel. She's one of the five that I watch LOST with. (Seffi, Rachel, Adina, Debbie and myself) We're good partners so far, and I'm really loving studying Talmud. The teacher, Rabbi Pesach Schindler, is a fabulous teacher so far.

Freshman Writing hasn't started yet.

That's two updates in one day! rock and roll.

With love,

Josh

Free Weekend at Beit Shemesh

Hey everyone!

I would like to personally welcome any new readers to my blog; I recently sent out an email to many different people telling them a little bit about life in Israel and about this blog. So for those that are just starting to read my blog, thanks! Hope you find my stories fun, entertaining, at times educational and enjoyable to read. With that, let's get to the summary of Beit Shemesh!

(In English, Beit means "house" AKA Beit Nativ, or "the house of Nativ" and Shemesh means "Sun", so the name of the town is "House of the Sun."

Thursday afternoon: MDA retest, and as I said I passed! Yay. I went shopping at Mr. Zol's (super market, near Ben Yahudia Street) with Seri, our MDA instructor, Jesse and Jonny. We bought burgers, hot dogs, chips, and other stuff like that for our MDA BBQ. Then I met up with Judah and we went to the shook to buy food to bring to the beach so we would have stuff to eat over shabbat. That night, Thursday, we all took a bus to Talpiyot and had our MDA bbq. Talpiyot is this cool park about 20 minutes outside of Jerusalem, but you can still see Jerusalem really well from it. We played games, cooked food and just had a good time. Around 11:00 we boarded a bus back to Jerusalem and met up with the rest of our Nativ friends who were hanging around the normal area in downtown Jerusalem: sabbaros, Yeruchalme and other places like that. Around 12:15 I was tired so I went back to base and called it a night. I had to prepare for a big day the next day. I set an alarm for 9 AM and went to sleep very excited for the weekend ahead of me.

I woke up before my alarm went off. Yossi, the director of Nativ, sent out a mass text to everyone on Nativ warning us of a heat wave that was in effect in Israel until Monday, warning everyone that hiking was advised against by the Israeli government for the upcoming weekend. Luckily, we were going to a beach with water so it didn't concern me. I couldn't fall back asleep so I took some time to pack up and get ready to leave. Seffi wasn't feeling well so he didn't come with us. We ended up changing plans at the last second, and instead of going to Ashkelon, the original plan (which is in the south) we went north to Beit Shemesh. Beit Shemesh is about 20 minutes away from Tiberous.

We took a bus to Tiberous and a taxi to Beit Shemesh. We ended up at this Kibbutz thats owned by a fellow Nativer's uncle. Ana, the Nativer, was enough to set us up at a good price and get us in contact with him. We arrived at the kibbutz beach, and there was about 80 people already there, with their tents set up and fires burning bright. We arrived around 2 in the afternoon. I went with Tyler, Judah, Marc, Haley, Shira and Rachel. It was a good group of people. We put our tents down and got ready for the evening. We put on our swim suits and went straight into the Kineret. The water was beautiful, and it was such a better beach than last time. This time, there was actually sand and it was legal to swim. We swam for a little bit, then dried off and got ready for shabbat. We took out our pita, hummas, apples, tangerines, assorted nuts, bamba, chocolate spread, pretzels and water. That was our meals for the next day and a half. We made kiddush, motzi, and did all the other prayers. By the time we were finished it was already well into the night. We decided to take our watches off before dinner and leave them off for the rest of the weekend. We turned in shortly after dinner, singing and one more swim session. I checked my watch. It was 9:05.

It took a good amount of time to fall asleep. Obviously, all of the Israelis there had no intention of falling asleep until the late hours of the night. It was not easy sleeping on the hard ground and having a lot of loud Israelis yelling and doing other obnoxious things. It wasn't that big of a deal because I still slept pretty well all things considered.

We woke out around 8:45 in the morning, and it was already hot and sunny. Our day consisted of this: swim, eat breakfast, sleep (that was the morning). Swim, eat Shabbas lunch, sleep. Swim, eat dinner, sleep. We literally did that cycle three times, and it was amazing. It was so nice to finally just get a chance to relax and take it easy. All day consisted of just swimming, eating a sleeping. It also consisted of some light davening.

By the way sorry I haven't written in 5 days, I've been doing a little of this every day.

We made it back to Jerusalem, and I basically just went to sleep, preparing for the first day of school the day, on Sunday. That's to come in my next post.

Thanks for reading! They come more frequently than this promise. Talk soon. For my family at AIPAC, I'm really jealous that you guys are there. Thanks for advocating for the best country ever.

Josh

Here's some pics from the last day of MDA training and Beit Shemesh! Sorry I don't have more it was Shabbat so I didn't take pictures until after it was over.

Final day of Magen David Adom Training

Hey everyone,

Yesterday, Wednesday, I took the final for my 60 hour MDA course.

MDA in a nutshell is the Israeli version of the American Red Cross. I've learned so much about medical studies. For example, I have learned what is, what the signs are and how to treat the most common non-traumatic situations/conditions such as strokes, concussions, diabetes, etc. I also learned the same things about traumatic situations such as head/abdominal/chest/spinal injuries and the five different types of shock. I learned how to administer CPR to adults, children and babies. I also learned PHTLS (pre hospital trauma life support) which entails keeping the patient alive until we transport him to the hospital.

I took the exam yesterday, and passed everything on my first try except for PHTLS, which I took today and passed! I am now officially a MDA first respondent! Today we went to the MDA central station and learned all about the inside of the ambulance. We saw where all the bandages were, the IV's, the collapasable beds and chairs, etc. It was really cool. I'm really looking forward to actually volunteering for MDA in the near future.

Tonight I'm going to the MDA barbeque for our class and instructors. It should be a good time. After I'm meeting up with one of my friends on Young Judea Yearcourse and Kevonim. That should be fun too.

Here's some pictures from MDA class:

From Left top- Seffi, David, Me, Noah Seth
From left bottom- Kay, John, Sophie, Steja, Seri (the teacher)



This is my roommate Seffi with the thumbs up, David in the backboard, Me and Noah my staff member.



John, Sophie and I backboarded David all by ourselves in under 3 minutes!



_______________________________________________

This upcoming Shabbat, I will be traveling to Ashkelon to camp out with about 10 other Nativers. I just got back from the Shuk, where I bought a ton of food with my friend Judah, and we only spent about 35 NIS per person (roughly 9 dollars) for pita, apples, tangerines, grapes, marzapan (rugalach, the best sweet food in Israel), Pringles, peanut butter Bamba, 2 different kinds of nuts and a bag of dried apricots. And that will be our food from Friday afternoon until Saturday night. As my dad says, "food fit for a king."

Shabbat Shalom, have a good and restful one. I'll be sure to give a good update when I get back from Ashkelon!

Josh

I love my room

right now i am sitting in my room watching lost with the most amazing crew ever-

rachel, adina, seffi and debbie!!! and sometimes gabe comes too.

i love lost

-for the record that was Adina who posted that while watching season 1 of LOST.

I just took my MDA final. The test part was pretty easy but the Hebrew part was really hard. I hope I do OK, I'll let you know after I do the practical this afternoon. Then I'll give a good summary of what MDA really is.

Talk soon,

Josh

Simchat Torah!

Good evening,

As I mentioned before, it was just chag season here, and chag season ends with the last day of sukkot: simchas Torah! Simchas Torah is a very unique holiday in which everyone basically just parties at shul for 4 hours at night, and 6 hours the next morning with the Torah. There are seven Hakafot (torah blessings) that we say, and after each one there is about 20 minutes of dancing and singing. As we get closer to the 7th blessing the dancing and singing get longer and longer. We sang all kinds of songs, many of them I didn't know but some of them I did.

On Friday night, Aaron, David, Tyler, Seth, Max, Brian, Asaf and some others went to Kol Rina. If you remember, Kol Rina was the shul that we went to the first weekend but couldn't find for almost an hour. This time we knew where we were going and it only took 15 minutes. It was a good service, and after Ma'ariv the leader of the shul (I don't know if he's the rabbi, or just the Chazzan, he's American and speaks both English and Hebrew perfectly) stood up on a chair inbetween the Machitzah and basically asked people if they wanted to pay over 1000 Shekalim for the honor of reading one of the Hakafot out loud during the upcoming dancing/song session. After about 40 minutes of 3 takers, some of the people pledged over 2000 Shekels, he got fed up with waiting and started the dancing.

They took out 4 Torahs from the bomb sheltered and locked ark. We danced with them for about 2 hours before we had to leave and get back to base for dinner. I actually ended up having the honor of reading one of them out loud. It just so happened to be the longest one and I definitely made up my own tune that made no sense because I didn't really know what I was doing.

I just got my ulpan grade. 83. not bad, not great but in Israel that's a B+. So, I'll think B+, and since I got a 87 on my Jerusalem final as well, that's a A-. OK sorry for getting distracted.

It was a really great night. We danced and sang and ended up getting back in time for dinner and the Nativ Tish. That's just a sweet song session.

The next morning, I went to Shira Chadasha with Seffi and a bunch of other people. I was there for about 5 hours, dancing with the torah and whatnot. It's a tradition in Israel that everyone in every shul in Israel on Simchat Torah morning gets an Alyehia (blessing over the torah). So I had one of course and it was great.

OK I really got to go to sleep. It's after midnight and I'm tired. Sorry... :( but by the way our mini fridge broke again and I lost 18 shekel on Shock chocolate milk, aka "shoko". that was lame

OK time go to, talk soon. Unfourtunately there's no pics from simchat torah, sorry :(

Talk soon,

-Josh

Desert Survival

Hey everyone,

So I havn't written in over 10 days, and I think I have some explaining to do. Here in Israel, from Rosh Hashana to yesterday is considered "Chag Season," where there is a new chag every few days. I have decided that, at least for my time in israel, not to break shabbat and that would limit my writing to 6 days a week. Between rosh hashana and now there was 2 days of rosh hashana, yom kippur, sukkot and simchas torah. but that's no excuse. i owe you guys a huge update. so here we go:

October 4th (Sunday): I wake up at 545 in the morning and board a bus with my track (Yerucham) heading due south to "the negev" aka the desert. after an hour and a half of riding the bus, we arrived at a synagogue in Be'er Sheva, the 'capital' of the negev. we daveded schacrit there, with our lulav's and everything, and had some pretty decent breakfast. i had a bagel, the first time (and last so far) since I left america. Sad :(. we then got back on the bus and headed more south. after another hour and a half, we found ourselves on a really random highway literally in the middle of nowhere, in the bus that was driving off of the road and into the desert. it then stopped after about 10 minutes of driving into the desert and dropped us off. thus begins the 3 day DESERT SURVIVAL ADVENTURE

DAY ONE: We started the hike around noon, but we started it off with a huge uphill climb. Our tour guides name is Michal, and our security guide's name is Tamir. they were both really cool, like 21 years old. the first day we hiked 5 kilometers (3ish miles?) up and down mountains. I was with my friend Adam for most of the first day. Adam and I were getting a little frustated with the slow pace of the group and the numerous amount of stops, so during most of the breaks we decided to hike up our own mountains. Some of the pictures posted are from that intense climb. while everyone was playing some stupid game with a stick, Adam, Seth Miri and I climbed up one huge mountain, then at the top we found another one, and got halfway up that one before Noah yelled at us to come down. It was right around sunset time, and it was absolutely beautiful. We kept hiking until we made it to the campsite. Night came and it quickly got dark and COLDDDD. We were expecting to have even worse food than we usually do back at beit Nativ, but it actually was unbelievable. We then made a campfire, and I played guitar for like two hours. it was amazing. once it was over, we were all absolutely exhusted. it was about 930 when we decided to call it a night. That night, the moon was unbelievably bright. We started calling it the nightlight because it really wasn't that much darker than it was during the day.

DAY TWO: Wake up at 530 AM. Davened schacrit in the desert as the sun was coming up with lulav's and all. We hiked 14 Kilometers that day, and went up one absolutely enormous mountain. We hiked up, and we ended up overlooking the biggest crater in Israel. It's a naturally formed crater, but its still really cool. We passed the Kibbutz group about halfway through the day. they told us the hardest part was still to come. We passed them and finished the final 8 KM pretty quickly, because it was all downhill. I guess they didn't realize that uphill for them was downhill for us! We arrived at the campsite and similarly to the night before, we made a campfire and I sang some songs for it. It was a really good time.

DAY THREE: Yea i realize that my summary's aren't the best, but I'll show you guys a lot of pictures in a second to make up for it. Sorry :/ It was a desert survival hike, walking over a lot of mountains, very hot sun beating down on my crispy body all day, very sweaty and dehydrated all the time. the usual. Day three ended with us reaching our final destination and getting into jeeps! the jeeps drove us for 30 minutes out of the desert and into a rest stop where we got cold cuts and juice for lunch. We made it back to base around 530, I had the best shower EVER and got to sleep around 10. I was gearing up for what was bound to be a very excited few days ahead of me: MDA TRAINING. That will be the next post, but until that goes up here's some pictures from the desert survival adventure!

Sept 30- Oct 3rd

Hey everyone,

Its currently 430 on Friday afternoon. I'm sitting in the Pirates Cove, aka room 611 with LeeAnn, Gabe and Seffi. In about 45 minutes I'm going to start the hike the Linda Gradstein's house in Arnona. I'm excited for Shabbas/Sukkot dinner!

Let's start on Tuesday night. Every Tuesday we have a mandatory evening program called erev Nativ. This time, we had a guest speaker. Some of you may know him, some may not. Rabbi Joel Roth spoke to us on Tuesday night. Rabbi Roth is one of the most well known and influential Rabbi's in the entire conservative movement. It was truly an inspiring speech. He talked to us about the failings of the conservative movement in israel and in america. he talked all about what the conservative movement actually is and why it is "Most authentic Jewish religious movement in the world today." He talked about the why orthodox and reform Judaism are the way they are, but why, in his opinion, they are wrong and the conservative movement is right.

He says there in the reform and orthodox movement, there isn't a big religious gaps between the rabbi's and his members. Orthodox people aren't any more religious than their rabbi's are, and same with the reform movement. but the conservative movement has a huge gap of religious observance between the rabbi's and his people. rabbi roth told us that the conservative movement is a movement dedicated to halacha, such as keeping shabbat and keeping kosher, but for some reason conservative jews don't understand that.

Let's start on Wednesday. Wednesday I took an ulpan test and ended up getting a 98. but it totally wasnt my fault i didnt get 100 because the font the teacher used was really confusing so i confused a kof and a final tzdik so it wrote the wrong letter. unfair.

OK so they turned off the internet as I was writing, so sorry I didn't get to you guys before shabbas. now i need to update about shabbas as well. ill make that a new post. until then let's cover thursday

Thursday was the ulpan final. it was ok, i'm pretty sure i passed, not sure about having an A but for sure in the B range, which is fine because that should get me to ulpan aleph plus plus which was the goal.

after the test, we had the first week of the NBA, the nativ basketball association at liberty bell park. we got the good court, i brought my speakers and we went. asaf, aaron and i organized the league, there's 5 teams of 4 guys on a team. my team is me, brian, tyler and ethan. we went 2-2, as in 2 wins and 2 losses. i played pretty well, getting better as the night went on, which is pretty normal. after intense basketball, we showered up and got ready for a good thursday night.

after the test we all went out on thursday night, it was pretty fun. what's lame is that all the nativ people don't congregate together in downtown jerusalem, we tend to spread out a little bit which is lame because i would rather spend time with nativ people than random americans/brit's that are roaming around ben yahudia street. that was fine, nothing special, lots of random israeli's playing music and lots of people. pretty standard thursday night.

Friday! friday was free, i woke up at 1145, the latest i've woken up since i've been in the holy land, it felt greattttt waking up that late. we just hung around before shabbas, and then i started to type this blog. then the internet got turned off.

last night, i went to a family friends house, Linda Gradstein, for Shabbat/Sukkot dinner. It was about a 45 minute walk to her house from beit nativ, but since i got lost about 4 times it took around an hour. there were a ton of little kids there, which was super fun. they were all around 8 years old. some were a little younger, some were a little older. after a nice shabbat dinner i walked back to base with two families that i met there and that was pleasant. i got back to base around 1130, hung out with some people for an hour and ended up getting to sleep around 130. i set a mental alarm clock because seffi and i both forgot to set alarm clocks.

i ended up waking up at 750, perfect timing. seffi i went to shira chadasha, a nice service. got back to base, hung out, did some work on my ankle, did mincha, maariv and sutff

going to burgers bar now

talk soon,

josh